baking

Sourdough Pita

by Linda on April 13, 2012

I think there’s only one trick to pita bread.  The oven has to be really really hot. Really.

If you have an oven that will heat up to that kind of temperature without a ridiculous waste of energy, they’re fantastically easy and fast – not much preparation and less than 5 minutes to cook – and really delicious with dips or soup, or filled with salad or felafel,  or halved and used as wraps with lunch fillings.

My gas oven is antique, and it doesn’t readily get up to the 250°C  or 500°F  you need to make the pita puff up and create a pocket.  The slow combustion stove probably would get up there eventually. Luckily for me, we have a beautiful Japanese Kamado charcoal barbeque that does it beautifully, and at the same time is perfect for charring eggplants and capsicums to go with the pita. I have a little stovetop camping oven that will do it too. It will only cook one at a time, but since they’re so fast that’s ok.

The Recipe:

Makes 6.

Start the night before with feeding your sourdough starter:

To feed the starter, I take mine out of the fridge the night before, and mix

  • 1 ¼ cups of unbleached bakers flour,
  • 1 ¼ cups of water, and
  • 1 ¼ cups of starter.

Put half of it back in the jar in the fridge.  I am left with 1½ cups of fed starter, to put in a bowl covered with a clean cloth on the kitchen bench for the night. By morning it should be frothy and alive looking.

In the morning:

Mix

  • 1 ½ cups of fed sourdough starter
  • 1 cup of wholemeal plain flour
  • ½ cup of bakers flour
  • teaspoon of salt

Tip another half a cup of bakers flour on the bench and knead briefly. Oil a bowl and swirl the dough ball round in it to coat, and leave it sitting, covered with a clean tea towel, for a few hours to rise.  How long will depend on how vigorous your starter is and how warm the day is. To speed it up, I put it out on the verandah table in the sun or on the shelf above the slow combustion stove.

Prove the Dough

After a few hours, the dough will be doubled in size and springy.  Divide into 6 balls, flour your benchtop, and use a floured rolling pin to roll the balls out into an oblong shape about 5mm thick.  Cover with the tea towel again and allow to prove for an hour or so. (That’s where I was up to in the picture).

Cooking

Heat your oven up to very hot - 250°C  or 500°F.  Put lightly oiled baking trays in to heat up too.

Cook the pita for just 2 to 3 minutes till they are puffed out and just starting to colour.

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{ 4 comments }

Heavy Wholegrain Sourdough

by Linda on July 26, 2011

I’m loving my everyday sourdough these days. I make a small loaf every second day (since there’s only two of us to eat it on everyday days). It’s getting heavier and heavier as I get the knack!  I’ve got into a rhythm  that is near enough to effortless –  certainly well worth the effort – about 15 minutes all up of actual work spread over 24 hours.  And that yields me the kind of bread that is tempting enough to inspire me to take lunch to work, and healthy enough to eat as much as I like (and I like).

The system is still the same as my Everyday Sourdough.  These days though, the 6.30 am cooked porridge mix is

  • a handful of whole oats (oat groats), cooked for 5 minutes or so, then add
  • a handful of hulled millet and keep cooking for another 5 minutes or so, then add
  • a handful of quinoa and cook for a few minutes more to absorb all the water.

The 7.00 am dough mix has

  • a cup of sourdough starter fed with unbleached bakers’ flour
  • rye flour
  • oat bran
  • linseed meal
  • the porridge mix (above)
  • a teaspoon of salt
  • and enough organic stoneground wholemeal flour (15%protein) to make a kneadable dough

Then the top is sprinkled liberally with sesame seeds and poppy seeds.

It’s a real wholegrain feast with attitude, and enough B vitamins to give me a whole day’s supply in a couple of slices. I haven’t worked out the exact cost per loaf, but even with all these goodies, it’s not much more than $1 a loaf – a fraction of the price of quality bread in the supermarket.

Though I’m experimenting with quinoa and oats and linseeds and sesame seeds, at the moment none of the ingredients are coming from the garden, but all are from sustainable farming done within a few hundred kilometres. Over winter I’ve been baking in the wood stove, which we have going for heating and hot water anyhow, so there’s no fuel use at all. Over summer I’ll use the gas oven, but if I can coincide with when I have it on for dinner or baking anyhow the fuel cost will add very little.

I’m loving it on so many levels, but hot from the oven spread with honey is up there!

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{ 4 comments }

Carambola and Macadamia Frangipane Tarts

by Linda on July 5, 2011

Carambolas (Star Fruit) don’t appear in fruit shops much, and I wonder why?  They’re a really nice fruit, sweet and juicy and full of vitamin C and potassium. If you live in an area where they will grow, they fruit prolifically in mid-winter and you are likely to have a glut of them.

If you don’t live in a carambola growing region, you might like to adapt this recipe.  It works with any sweet, juicy fruit in season the same time as macas – which means late autumn to early spring. With the sweetness of the carambola and the oil in the nuts, these need very little sugar or butter so they’re the kind of treat you can comfortably pack in a school lunch box or have in a mid-afternoon break from too-inactive work!

The Recipe:

Macadamia Meal

First crack your macadamias then use a food processor to blend them into a fairly fine meal. You need 60 grams, or half a cup of macadamia meal for the pastry and another 90 grams or three quarters of a cup for the filling.  Fresh nuts in shell are a different thing to the stale old nuts you find in packets in midsummer, so it is worth making your own.  This tool makes macadamia nuts a realistic everyday food.

Macadamia Shortcrust Pastry

This pastry is so easy, so delicious, and so healthy that you can eat pastry every day and not feel guilty!

In a food processor, blend together:

  • ½ cup wholemeal plain flour
  • ½ cup (60 gm) cup maca meal
  • 1 egg yolk (keep the white for the filling)
  • 1 dessertspoon butter

Add just enough water – a couple of dessertspoons full – to make a soft dough.

If your kitchen is warm, you may need to put the dough in the fridge for a few minutes (while you make the filling) so it will roll out easily.

Flour your bench top and roll the dough out. Cut out 8 saucer sized rounds and use them to line 8 holes in a muffin tin or 8  little tart tins.

Bake for around 15 minutes in a moderate oven until the pastry is firm but not yet browning.  (I don’t bother with beans or rice or anything to blind bake – it stays pretty flat without it).

The Macadamia Carambola Frangipane

You don’t need to wash the food processor.

Slice up 4 carambolas and reserve 8 nice big slices from the middle of the fruits for decorating.

Blend together into a paste:

  • 90 grams carambolas (about 4 fruit after the middle slices have been reserved for decorating as above)
  • ¾ cup (90 grams) maca meal
  • 1 dessertspoon wholemeal plain flour
  • 1 dessertspoon butter
  • 1½ dessertspoons honey
  • ½ teaspoon cardamom powder

Beat an egg white until peaks form, then gently fold in the macadamia-carambola paste.

Assembling and Baking

Spoon the filling into the shells.  The filling will puff up but it will rise up rather than out so you can fill quite full.  Decorate each tart with a slice of carambola.

Bake for around half an hour in a moderate oven until puffed up and golden.

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{ 6 comments }

Everyday Sourdough

April 26, 2011

I’ve cracked it –  everyday bread – “everyday” meaning healthy enough for every day (even for someone too inactive to be spendthrift with carbohydrates), and “everyday” meaning easy enough to bother making even on a workday (when all I am looking forward to when I get home is a hot bath and a glass of [...]

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Apple Oat Slice

April 6, 2011

Last week of the school term, and it’s been hard finding space for Muesli Bar Challenge recipes in amongst everything else.  But this week is the non-planting week by the lunar calendar, and though I don’t follow it very religiously, it is also a bit too wet for planting (ironically – mostly I complain about it [...]

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Zucchini Ginger Muffins

March 2, 2011

I promised there would be more Muesli Bar Challenge recipes this year but there’s been too much else to write about.  But a golden zucchini that got away inspired me.  What do you do with a kilo of zucchini? This recipe is in my handwritten book as Wwoofer’s Zuke Bread because the original came to me [...]

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Apricot and Semolina Tarts

December 6, 2010

The local Farmers’ Market this week had apricots, from within 100 miles.  Seduced by memories of apricots I had in Tasmania years ago I bought a kilo.  Sadly it just retaught me a lesson I know so well:  eating local is not just an ethical response to the need to reduce transport of everything, by [...]

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Lunchbox Peach Sbrisoletta

November 22, 2010

Early season peaches are just coming into season here.  I don’t really grow stonefruit – we are smack bang in fruit fly territory and it’s just too much work.  I have a couple of volunteer seedling peach trees though, and although most years the birds, possums, and flying foxes get most of the fruit,  the [...]

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Blueberry and Lemon Ricotta Slice

November 15, 2010

Our blueberry bushes are bearing and the farm up the road is selling bags of blueberry seconds so this is the  second in the   Muesli Bar Challenge series featuring blueberries.  Last week’s muffins are a hard act to follow.  This recipe is just as healthy, low in fat and sugar and featuring ricotta, yoghurt, eggs and [...]

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